Novel Quotes

#1. We all know what good writing is: It's the novel we can't put down, the poem we never forget, the speech that changes the way we look at the world. It's the article that tells us when, where, and how, the essay that clarifies what was hazy before. Good writing is the memo that gets action, the letter that says what a phone call can't. It's the movie that makes us cry, the TV show that makes us laugh, the lyrics to the song we can't stop singing, the advertisement that makes us buy. Good writing can take form in prose or poetry, fiction or nonfiction. It can be formal or informal, literary or colloquial. The rules and tools for achieving each are different, but one difficult-to-define quality runs through them all: style. "Effectiveness of assertion" was George Bernard Shaw's definition of style. "Proper words in proper places" was Jonathan Swift's. You #Quote by Mitchell Ivers

#2. If a traditional publisher offered me a quarter of a million dollars for a novel, I'd consider it. But anything less than that, I'm sure I can do better on my own. #Quote by J.A. Konrath

#3. If novels and stories are bulletins from the progressive states of ignorance a writer passes through over the years, observations and opinions about horses are all the more so, since horses are more mysterious than life and harder to understand. #Quote by Jane Smiley

#4. Writing a novel mimics what we bring to our journey of life. God is the great editor who purges the faulty, the awkward, and all the bits that are just plain wrong, so the optimal story can finally emerge. #Quote by Denise M. Baran-Unland

#5. Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one. #Quote by Charles McCarry

#6. Paul Wilson) The Serial Series (with J.A. Konrath and Jack Kilborn) "Serial" (short story) "Bad Girl" (short story) Serial Uncut (novella) Killers (novella) Birds of Prey Killers Uncut Serial Killers Uncut (double novel) #Quote by Blake Crouch

#7. I struggle with confidence, every time. I'm never completely sure I can write another book. Maybe my scope is too grand, my questions too hard, surely readers won't want to follow me here. A novel is like a cathedral, it knocks you down to size when you enter into it. #Quote by Barbara Kingsolver

#8. I thought I lost you again. You couldn't know what those four years were like. To not know where you were, who you were with, or if you were being treated well? I wasn't sure for a long time if you were even alive. I don't ever want to go through that again. Vance ... The Elder Effect #Quote by D.L. Given

#9. Henry Miller wrote novels, but he calls his protagonist Henry, often Henry Miller, and his books are in this gray area between memoir and novel. #Quote by Leslie Fiedler

#10. I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly. #Quote by Gao Xingjian

#11. In this world, there are only 'things that seem like the truth' and 'things that seem like rumors - A-ya #Quote by Suzumu

#12. I feel like I have a lot of novel ideas, but they often come up while I'm already in the process of working on a book. You have to watch out with the slutty new idea. #Quote by Matt De La Pena

#13. Children and adolescents, being relatively new to life, are naturally creative because they haven't been brainwashed, so to speak, by the conventional attitudes of society. Consequently, students are always coming up with novel images, words, and actions that my delight, enlighten, or inspire adults....Creativity has not been the subject of intense focus, extensive research, or high levels of funding in American education. #Quote by Thomas Armstrong

#14. Treat me like a rare first edition of your favourite novel. #Quote by Christina Strigas

#15. There is nothing novel about trying to become happy. And one can become happy, within certain limits, without any recourse to the practice of meditation. But conventional sources of happiness are unreliable, being dependent upon changing conditions. It is difficult to raise a happy family, to keep yourself and those you love healthy, to acquire wealth and find creative and fulfilling ways to enjoy it, to form deep friendships, to contribute to society in ways that are emotionally rewarding, to perfect a wide variety of artistic, athletic, and intellectual skills - and to keep the machinery of happiness running day after day. There is nothing wrong with being fulfilled in all these ways - except for the fact that, if you pay close attention, you will see that there is still something wrong with it. These forms of happiness aren't good enough. Our feelings of fulfillment do not last. And the stress of life continues. #Quote by Sam Harris

#16. One Bagatelle, and I'll raise you a novel," Megan had tweeted back.
"Writing for tea? Now that would have been a solution for the British empire," Laura returned.
"Writing for me," Megan had typed.
"I'll write you a tea fortune."
"No deal. I want a novel. September sounds good. #Quote by L.L. Barkat

#17. I looked up at the wall. My bachelor's degree had been in History. Films like Back to the Future and Quantum Leap had been some of my favorite programs. Could time travel really be possible? This seemed too unreal. #Quote by Anna M. Aquino

#18. Use your little grey cells mon ami"
(Hercule Poirot in 'The Mysterious Affair At Styles') #Quote by - Agatha Christie

#19. I wish I could spend six years writing one novel. #Quote by Paullina Simons

#20. When you're writing a novel - at least the way I write is I work from what I would call 'emotional atmosphere,' ambiance to ambiance. #Quote by Oscar Hijuelos

#21. Every once in a while you come across a novel that reminds you why you think you enjoy reading in the first place. #Quote by Graham Parke

#22. In my end lies my beginning" Who said that? Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots (1542-1587). #Quote by Danny Saunders

#23. Sometimes the writer writes one novel, then another, then another, and the first one he sells is the first one the public sees - but mostly, the debut novel is almost never the first novel the writer wrote. There's a private idea of the writer, known to the writer and whoever rejected him previously, and a public one, visibly only in publication. Each book is something of a mask of the troubles that went into it and so is the writer's visible career. #Quote by Alexander Chee

#24. When you write a novel, you never have to be in the service of the reader. My only concern with my books is that the world that's created be as logical and whole as possible. #Quote by Hanya Yanagihara

#25. Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices. #Quote by Amos Oz

#26. Anne could do no more; but her heart prophesied some mischance to damp the perfection of her felicity. #Quote by Jane Austen

#27. My father managed to change his entire life after I wrote a novel about his brutal regime as a family man. It took resoluteness and courage for my father to change, and I need to acknowledge that. #Quote by Pat Conroy

#28. Mum was thinking 'bout going back to study creative twatting writing. She had a novel in her, whatever the fuck that meant. She was going to do all the stuff that having me when she was twenty had stopped her from doing. She said I'd made her tits little and taken away her identity. #Quote by Caroline Smailes

#29. I've written short stories in first person, but you have so much more control writing in third person. Third person, you know what everybody's thinking. First person is very limiting, and I could never sustain a first person novel before. #Quote by Tamora Pierce

#30. When I started writing the third book, 'The Kill,' the intention was just to write a thriller, a crime novel for myself, really, in which there would be no body, no solution - where you would look at an event from different people's perspectives. #Quote by Richard House

#31. The monkey liked most humans. They left food cans outside their homes for his family to rummage through in the morning
sun. Some yelled and threw sticks, but were slow and didn't bite. Humans were mostly harmless. #Quote by Cole Alpaugh

#32. The Intellectual Transcending Equation In Life:
Occurrence Plus Perception Minus Materialistic
Reasoning Divided By Nothing Equals Spiritual
Progression, With A Remainder Of Blessings. #Quote by Calvin W. Allison

#33. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. #Quote by Arthur Schopenhauer

#34. I love the movies, and when I go to see a movie that's been made from one of my books, I know that it isn't going to be exactly like my novel because a lot of other people have interpreted it. But I also know it has an idea that I'll like because that idea occurred to me, and I spent a year, or a year and a half of my life working on it. #Quote by Stephen King

#35. I was very fortunate that my first novel captivated the imaginations of so many readers who asked for a sequel. After that, one book led to another as I discovered other facets to my characters I wanted to investigate further. #Quote by Jennifer Chiaverini

#36. We're novel worthy, day walking, blood sucking, tortured souls trapped in a body that can't die for all eternity with no feelings, no emotions and no heart. - Elaine White, Runaway Girl #Quote by Stavros And Contributors

#37. The counsellor who never reads a novel or never opens a book of poetry is neglecting an important resource for empathic development. #Quote by Dave Mearns

#38. A novel need not impart information or inform. It must seduce & snare the reader with feelings & break the reader's heart. #Quote by Mark Rubinstein

#39. I don't really ask of myself a given word or page count or number of hours. To work every day, that's my only fetish. And there is a physical quality to it when a novel is thriving. #Quote by Jonathan Lethem

#40. The morning after my mother's death, I was surprised to see the sunrise. From behind the curtain of my bedroom window I was surprised to see the people leave their homes and begin the day. Downstairs, the hands of the grandfather clock continued to tick, marking each passing hour with a chime that echoed over the black and white chessboard tiles of the front hall. I was surprised to see the mail come at the same time as the day before and, later that evening, the sun set once more as it did since the beginning of time. My mother's death did not disturb the planets in their courses. And, though everything kept moving like she never existed at all, my world erupted into chaos until the universe swirled around me like a whirlpool of scattering stars. #Quote by James Campion Conway

#41. This novel was the author's gift to her brother-in-law, who had #Quote by Agatha Christie

#42. The books I read this year were great, but then, so was the fanfiction. Over the years I've been asked if I've read anything good lately, and I've always bitten my tongue: I often have, but it's not "real literature," after all, but rather some 30-chapter masterpiece that someone has penned for free - for the love of the source material. I'm kind of done glossing over this major part of my reading life: for every good novel I read this year, I read a fantastic novel-length fic as well. #Quote by Elizabeth Minkel

#43. We wish to discuss a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid. (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biologic interest. #Quote by Rosalind Franklin

#44. The story and the poem are obviously changed by being placed in the novel, so in a sense they're no longer the works that preceded the novel. #Quote by Ben Lerner

#45. Good listeners always hear something novel #Quote by Ela Crain

#46. Writing the middle of a novel is a lot like driving through Texas. You think it's never going to end, and the scenery looks the same. #Quote by Carolyn Wheat

#47. People seem to read so much more nonfiction than fiction, and so it always gives me great pleasure to introduce a friend or family member to a novel I believe they'll cherish but might not otherwise have thought to pick up and read. #Quote by Chris Bohjalian

#48. Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry. #Quote by Eugenio Montale

#49. The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero. #Quote by Mary McCarthy

#50. It's difficult for me to have a large story, a very large story - a novel is a large story. I'm used to writing and doing these little miniature paintings. #Quote by Sandra Cisneros

#51. If you travel long enough, every story becomes a novel. #Quote by Gloria Steinem

#52. One did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning. #Quote by Barbara Pym

#53. Goethe said, "The author whom a lexicon can keep up with is worth nothing"; Somerset Maugham says that the finest compliment he ever received was a letter in which one of his readers said: "I read your novel without having to look up a single word in the dictionary." These writers, plainly, lived in different worlds. #Quote by Randall Jarrell

#54. The lessons learned in journalism also apply. Writing for NPR has taught me to cut a piece in half and then in half again - without losing the essence. Apply that to the swollen prose of a bulky novel and you might reveal a beautiful work. #Quote by Julianna Baggott

#55. Applied to the news , having perspective involves an ability to compare an apparently traumatic event in the present with the experiences of humanity across the whole of its history – in order to work out what level of attention and fear it should fairly demand. With perspective in mind, we soon realize that – contrary to what the news suggests – hardly anything is totally novel, few things are truly amazing and very little is absolutely terrible. #Quote by Alain De Botton

#56. To standing in the bow wind with no charted course."
Clay Mitchell, "Half-Past Eternity" book II "Eterna". #Quote by Clay Mitchell

#57. Tess passed by the Church's sign, and then made the turn right. Her expectations for a degree of improvement were met with passed echoes of indecisive hand claps from mental bodied insecurities that infiltrated her subconscious with a disruptive applause in an attempt to divert her focus from the road of progression by putting it back on her publicized devastations. #Quote by Calvin W. Allison

#58. Can I kiss you?" And she would let him, lightly on her lips, a moment of brief anticipation. "Your kisses are like sugar woman." He would tell her affectionately. "So sweet." He would close in on her and then ask softly, "Please spend the night with me. #Quote by Keira D. Skye

#59. The devil is always discovering something novel against the truth. #Quote by Pope Leo I

#60. There's a swell book that's out of print now. Maybe Seven Stories will bring it out again. It's called The Writer and Psychoanalysis by a man who's now dead named Edmund Bergler. He claimed he had treated more writers than anyone else in his field, and being that he practiced in New York, he probably did. Bergler said that writers were fortunate in that they were able to treat their neuroses every day by writing. He also said that as soon as a writer was blocked, this was catastrophic because the writer would start to go to pieces. And so I said in a piece in Harper's, or a letter I wrote to Harper's, about "the death of the novel": People will continue to write novels, or maybe short stories, because they discover that they are treating their own neuroses. And I have said about the practice of the arts that practicing any art - be it painting, music, dance, literature, or whatever - is not a way to make money or become famous. It's a way to make your soul grow. So you should do it anyway. #Quote by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

#61. Tuck watched the sun bubble into the ocean. Columns of vertical cumulus clouds turned to cones of pink cotton candy, then as the sun became a red wafer on the horizon, they turned candy-apple red, with purple rays reaching out of them like searchlights. The water was neon over wet asphalt, blood-spattered gunmetal - colors from the cover of a detective novel where heroes drink hard and beauty is always treacherous. #Quote by Christopher Moore

#62. Don't try to write a novel. Write short stories and then figure out how to connect them. #Quote by Ray Bradbury

#63. Hollywood called just as I crested thirty. My novels did not and still do not interest them, but my writing ability did. #Quote by Rita Mae Brown

#64. But I was right and the real world seemed increasingly nonsensical. Why train for years to do a job you bitched about all day? Didn't it make more sense to follow your dreams and maybe do a little good at the same time? I didn't want to be a lawyer or a bank manager or a goddamn burger flipper. We only get one life and I wanted mine to be exciting ... #Quote by Mark Millar

#65. Although many of his other novels are brilliant there is a power in 'Oliver Twist' that I believe Dickens never managed to retrieve. It is as if he was sent to this earth with the sole purpose of writing this book. #Quote by Henning Mankell

#66. Maybe I've just read too many novels. In novels, alcoholics are always attractive and fuuny and charming and complex, like Sebastian Flyte or ABe North in Tender in the Night, and they're drinking because of a deep, unquenchable sadness of the soul, or the terrible legacy of the First World War, whereas I just get drunk because I'm thirsty, and I like the taste of lager ... #Quote by David Nicholls

#67. we would stride over Hinksey and Cumnor - we walked almost as fast as we talked - disputing and quoting, as we looked for the dark dingles and tree-topped hills of Matthew Arnold. This kind of walk must be among the commonest, perhaps among the best, of undergraduate experiences. Lewis, with the gusto of a Chesterton or a Belloc, would suddenly roar out a passage of poetry that he had newly discovered and memorized, particularly if it were in Old English, a language novel and enchanting to us both for its heroic attitudes and crashing rhythms #Quote by Jocelyn Gibb

#68. I think that physics is about escaping the prison of the received thoughts and searching for novel ways of thinking the world, about trying to clear a bit the misty lake of insubstantial dreams, which reflect reality like the lake reflects the mountains. #Quote by Carlo Rovelli

#69. The Sleepin' Fox Catches No Poultry. #Quote by P.J. Parker

#70. The novel ... creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience. #Quote by V.S. Pritchett

#71. The child who believes there is life after a novel ends. #Quote by John Green

#72. I don't write constantly; it's two serials and a novel a year. #Quote by Umera Ahmad

#73. Perhaps that is why the novel flourished in England. You had these communities that would stay put and people would see one another all the time and cause one another to change and have the opportunity to observe the changes over time. #Quote by Tobias Wolff

#74. Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements. #Quote by J.G. Ballard

#75. No one is treated with more patronizing condescension than the unpublished author or, in general, the would-be artist. At best he is commiserated. At worst mocked. He has presumed to rise above others and failed. I still recall a conversation around my father's deathbed when the visiting doctor asked him what his three children were doing. When he arrived at the last and said young Timothy was writing a novel and wanted to become a writer, the good lady, unaware that I was entering the room, told my father not to worry, I would soon change my mind and find something sensible to do. Many years later, the same woman shook my hand with genuine respect and congratulated me on my career. She had not read my books. #Quote by Tim Parks

#76. I'd never written a novel before, and I wrote a novel, and that turned out OK. #Quote by Rainbow Rowell

#77. I am no indiscriminate novel reader. The mere trash of the common circulating library I hold in the highest contempt. #Quote by Jane Austen

#78. All she really wanted to do was sleep, but it seemed her awareness level was operating at peak efficiency, for some reason. #Quote by Jason Medina

#79. The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form. #Quote by Penelope Lively

#80. Literature allows us to cross the borders -- as imaginary as they are indispensable -- which circumscribe and define our selves. Reading, we allow other people to enter us -- and if we make room for them so willingly, it's because we know them already. The novel celebrates our miraculous capacity to recognize others in ourselves, and ourselves in others. #Quote by Nancy Huston

#81. This progressive effacement of human relationships is not without certain problems for the novel. How, in point of fact, would one handle the narration of those unbridled passions, stretching over many years, and at times making their effect felt on several generations? We're a long way from Wuthering Heights, to say the least. The novel form is not conceived for depicting indifference or nothingness; a flatter, more terse, and dreary discourse would need to be invented. #Quote by Michel Houellebecq

#82. Oh yes, he's seen the black pupils of time's eyes. Two dark drains in a pair of dirty gas station bathroom sinks. The faucet's open and he's gurgling down the pipes, gushing toward whatever tank he's bound to swirl around in for the rest of his life. There's no telling from here if that's a realm of purification or of shit. There's only one way to find out, and that's to ride it all the way down. #Quote by Patrick Bryant

#83. But Moby-Dick is the explanation of America. It's not just a novel. It is a book of prophecy. It is the book. It is the book of America. #Quote by Robert Stone

#84. After having produced aquatic animals of all ranks and having caused extensive variations in them by the different environments provided by the waters, nature led them little by little to the habit of living in the air, first by the water's edge and afterwards on all the dry parts of the globe. These animals have in course of time been profoundly altered by such novel conditions; which so greatly influenced their habits and organs that the regular gradation which they should have exhibited in complexity of organisation is often scarcely recognisable. #Quote by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

#85. Like Broadway, the novel, and G-d, feminism has been declared dead many times #Quote by Katha Pollitt

#86. If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account. #Quote by V.S. Naipaul

#87. And the Buck women found themselves in the novel position of having two healthy, strong men at their bidding. #Quote by Sarah Mayberry

#88. A novel requires a certain kind of world-building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you have this sense that there are hinges that the reader doesn't see. #Quote by Dan Chaon

#89. A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality. #Quote by Milan Kundera

#90. We declare that no one is permitted to introduce, or to describe, or to compare, or to study, or otherwise to teach another faith. Whoever presumes to introduce or teach or pass on another creed ... or whoever presumes to introduce a novel doctrine ... We declare to be anathematized. #Quote by Pope Agatho

#91. After writing a novel, what is there to say? If a novelist could say it in a maxim, they wouldn't need 120,000 words, several years and sundry characters, plots and subplots, and so on. I'd much rather listen always. #Quote by Richard Flanagan

#92. I wrote the worst novel ever. #Quote by Sophie Ellis-Bextor

#93. Novels are the means by which we can escape the moment we are imprisoned in, but at the same time, the roots of a novel are in the world in which it is written. We write, and we read, to understand the world we live in. #Quote by Romesh Gunesekera

#94. Remember, despite the fact that this book is being sold as a 'fantasy' novel, you must take all of the things it says extremely seriously, as they are quite important, are in no way silly, and always make sense.
Rutabaga. #Quote by Brandon Sanderson

#95. CYRANO:
Thy name is in my heart as in a sheep-bell,
And as I ever tremble, thinking of thee,
Ever the bell shakes, ever thy name ringeth!
All things of thine I mind, for I love all things;
I know that last year on the twelfth of May-month,
To walk abroad, one day you changed your hair-plaits!
I am so used to take your hair for daylight
That,--like as when the eye stares on the sun's disk,
One sees long after a red blot on all things--
So, when I quit thy beams, my dazzled vision
Sees upon all things a blonde stain imprinted.

ROXANE (agitated):
Why, this is love indeed!. . .

CYRANO:
Ay, true, the feeling
Which fills me, terrible and jealous, truly
Love,--which is ever sad amid its transports!
Love,--and yet, strangely, not a selfish passion!
I for your joy would gladly lay mine own down,
--E'en though you never were to know it,--never!
--If but at times I might--far off and lonely,--
Hear some gay echo of the joy I bought you!
Each glance of thine awakes in me a virtue,--
A novel, unknown valor. Dost begin, sweet,
To understand? So late, dost understand me?
Feel'st thou my soul, here, through the darkness mounting?
Too fair the night! Too fair, too fair the moment!
That I should speak thus, and that you should hearken!
Too fair! In moments when my hopes rose proudest,
I never hoped such guerdon. Naught is left me
#Quote by Edmond Rostand

#96. Wesley Stace has always been the only genuinely gifted fiction writer who also happens to be a rock star, but Wonderkid is the book he was born to write. And if you prefer your novels brazen, poignant and hilarious, as I do, you were born to read it. Like a great show, this will stay with you long after the last cymbal crash and power strum. #Quote by Sam Lipsyte

#97. To write a novel is to dream while awake, then express the dream to the reader in an absorbing way. The road leading from the writer's inner world to the readers' is paved with prose. #Quote by Alan Joshua

#98. The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair. #Quote by Jose Bergamin

#99. Writing a novel- actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs- is a tremendous pain in the ass. Now that TV's so good and the Internet is an endless forest of distraction, it's damn near impossible. That should be taken into account when ranking the all-time greats. Somebody like Charles Dickens, for example, who had nothing better to do except eat mutton and attend public hangings, should get very little credit. #Quote by Steve Hely

#100. This story is always yours for the telling.

This has always been yours. You can expand to fill it all or take up the smallest corner. You can write in invisible ink. You can tell your story in red wine stains and spilled ink and bite marks. You can only write in pencil so it can always be erased. You can write in layers, and turn the page and write sideways. You can spin spiral and make your words dance.

You can ink it on the surface of your skin or x-ray vision the story onto the blank canvas of your bones. You can write a novel and then let the whole thing dissolve in the waves. You can write the truth and bury it in the ground, throw it in the fire, fold it into paper airplanes and watch it fly, roll it into a note in a bottle and toss it in the ocean and let it find its own way home.

Or, you share it with the whole fucking world.

You can care and not care and care-not-care all at once.

But you get to write. And you get to choose the story you tell.

And there's no freedom bigger or bolder or braver than that. #Quote by Jeanette LeBlanc

#101. Along the (writing) way accidents happen, detours get taken ... But these are not "divine" accidents; I don't believe in those. I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere digressions, you'll recognize that and make the necessary revisions. The more you know about a book, the freer you can be to fool around. The less you know, the tighter you get. #Quote by John Irving

#102. Life's like a puzzle. Everyone is given one piece. Sometimes you connect with someone or something that has an interlocking part. As time goes by, you'll see that picture taking form, and you'll be amazed how beautiful it is. God will never tell you how many pieces it takes or how to complete the puzzle, but when you meet Him in heaven, you'll see that everything fit together perfectly. #Quote by Dan Petermeier

#103. So, I guess the answer to your question is very few people can bring off a novel of the future because it's just so damn hard to make it look like the future. #Quote by Jerry Pournelle

#104. For me, what I am making in the novel is a place to live. When I first switched from poetry to novels, I was asked why, and the metaphor I came up with was about poems as rooms. You can make a room perfect, but then you have to shut the door and never go back, whereas a novel is like a house - it can never be perfect, but you can make a life in it. #Quote by Nicole Krauss

#105. (T)he real world worked differently than stories. In a novel you always knew the moment when something Happened, when someone Changed. But real life was full of gradual, piecemeal, continuous transformation. It was full of accidents and undefinables, and things that just happened on their own. #Quote by Scott Westerfeld

#106. But from what are we escaping by means of the
novel? From a reality we consider too overwhelming? Happy people read novels, too, and it is an
established fact that extreme suffering takes away the taste for reading. From another angle, the romantic
universe of the novel certainly has less substance than the other universe where people of flesh and blood
harass us without respite. #Quote by Albert Camus

#107. Learning is available at the library for free; under a tree with a dog-eared paperback; at a job with a boss who gives you responsibility and mentorship; while traveling; while leading a cause, movement, or charity; while writing a novel or composing a poem or crafting a song; while interning, apprenticing, or volunteering; while playing a sport or immersing yourself in a language; while starting a business; and now, while watching a TED talk or taking a Khan Academy class ... #Quote by Michael Ellsberg

#108. Why worry, if today be sweet'? #Quote by Thrity Umrigar

#109. My father was sleepless most of his life. So by the age of five, I was awake with him all night long, watching bad television or we'd lie in the same bed, and I'd read my comic books while he read his latest spy or mystery novel. #Quote by Sherman Alexie

#110. Have you noticed how Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen look nothing alike, and yet they both manage to look exactly like their father, Martin? #Quote by Ken O'Neill

#111. Mann was profoundly influenced by two philosophers, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who returned to the most ancient of all philosophical questions - "How to live?" - and whose writings offered novel perspectives for considering that question (much more perspective-offering than rigorous argument!) #Quote by Philip Kitcher

#112. Inverted commas (or speech marks, or quotes) are sometimes used by fastidious writers as a kind of linguistic rubber glove, distancing them from vulgar words or clichés they are too refined to use in the normal way. This 'N' character in Iris Murdoch's novel evidently can't bring himself to say 'keep in touch' without sealing it hygienically within inverted commas, and doubtless additionally indicating his irony with two pairs of curled fingers held up at either side of his face. #Quote by Lynne Truss

#113. Just like literature, wine takes time to learn. Before having access to the emotion of a stunning poem or to the vigor of a captivating novel, we all had to go through a long initiation. First, we need to learn the alphabet, the sound of each letter. In wine, that would be learning about the grapes and their characteristics. Then, once we master our letters, we need to learn the arrangements of letters, the pronunciation, the grammar, the structure of sentences. Now we can read. In wine, that would be the stage when we start noticing differences between two reds. You no longer drink wine: you start drinking this wine. #Quote by Olivier Magny

#114. The accelerating pace of zoonotic transmission of novel viruses into humans is attributable to anthropogenic epidemiologic factors. Only behavior modification or medical management of this future health burden will minimize the risks of future zoonoses for human populations. #Quote by Michael G. Cordingley

#115. I think all artists struggle to represent the geometry
of life in their own way, just like writers deal with
archetypes. There are only so many stories that you can
tell, but an infinite number of storytellers. #Quote by Henry Mosquera

#116. I could go off into the wilderness and write fantasy novels for the rest of my life and probably be happy; but I always want to challenge myself. #Quote by Felicia Day

#117. There is a safety mechanism in place [to ensure the perambulator doesn't turn back into a purse with a baby in it] : if anything weighing more than a pound and a half-about the weight of a three-volume novel-is in the carriage of the perambulator, it will not transform. #Quote by Lev A.C. Rosen

#118. If I tried to write long-hand, I suppose I'd never finish a novel. I edit too much as I write - the paper would be "white-out" and sharpie marks. Writing with a computer works for me, so I stick with it. #Quote by Nicholas Sparks

#119. ...there is a constant theme at the centre of all her writings which forms the heart of her vision of God, From her earliest novel to the mature vision of her autobiography, the central importance of unity, reconciliation, one-ness, is reiterated; for she came increasingly to see everything in life, even the darkness of fear and pain and suffering, as part of the one perfect whole that is Creation, that tiny hazelnut of Dame Julian's vision that was all that is made. #Quote by Christine Rawlins

#120. When I read 'Watchmen,' it changed my view of so many things. It was the first time I'd read a graphic novel really like that. #Quote by Joel Silver

#121. I've written a lot of novels for teens and tweens ... but I'd never really tackled the North Carolina side of me. And it's so strong and so important, and yet I hadn't acknowledged it. And so one of the things I wanted to do in "Shine" is take that on. #Quote by Lauren Myracle

#122. He said it felt like walking into another century, being there, looking up at the mullion windows, all darkened now, and the castellated towers that rose up out of the clutch of the ivy. "And you," he said, "you look like the heroine of a nineteenth-century novel, with your beautifully serious face and your grave, grey eyes. So do you have a suitably romantic story to tell? #Quote by Justine Picardie

#123. There were cats; cats I was wildly attached to - my husband and I spoke in cat voices. Once the marriage was over, I never thought of the cats again (until I wrote about them in a novel and disguised them as hamsters). #Quote by Nora Ephron

#124. In its basic form, nursing can be seen as a duty, but beyond the incessant operational activities that lay the foundation of our daily work, the profession is all about grace. Helping people is a noble calling. It is a privilege to serve my fellow human beings. Fifteen years has seen many ups and downs at the workplace, but I have enjoyed serving the many patients who come into my care, and have prayed for the souls of those who were on the brink of death. #Quote by Katherine Soh

#125. Joy. The joy of my joy. There through everything. A shocking sense of vitality and beauty present in both happiness and in the midst of pain. The only thing I can think to compare this experience to is the experience of an excellent story - reading a great novel, say, or watching a great movie. The scene before you might be a happy one or a sad one. You might feel uplifted or you might feel heartbroken or you might feel afraid. But whatever you feel, you're still loving the story. Through prayer, I came to experience both pleasure and sorrow in something like that way. In God, the life of the flesh became the story of the spirit. I loved that story, no matter what. During #Quote by Andrew Klavan

#126. Wanted to do something creative, and wrote "Asesina" as I transitioned careers. I hope you will enjoy the novel. #Quote by Craig Keffeler

#127. What I try to do with any of my stories, any of my novels, is make them feel very original. #Quote by Nicholas Sparks

#128. For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again. #Quote by Howard Nemerov

#129. The average American child sees 20,000 murders in TV before reaching age 18. This is considered normal. Every community has video rental stores filled with multimillion-dollar films that depict people doing terrible things to each other. If you read newspapers, you have every right to believe that Bad Nasty Things compose 90 percent of the human experience. But you will be hard-pressed to find more than a few novels, films, news stories, and TV shows that dare to depict life as a gift whose purpose is to enrich the human soul. #Quote by Rob Brezsny

#130. Lie through your teeth and call it a novel. All will be well. #Quote by James R. Paddock

#131. There's something
so great about this," she whispers.
About what?" I whisper back.
About this," she whispers.
About being outlaws.
It's just you and me - against the world. #Quote by Sonya Sones

#132. Whenever anyone declares having read a book of mine I am disappointed by the error. That's because my books are not to be read in the sense usually called reading: the only way it seems to me to approach the novels that I write is to catch them in the same manner that one catches an illness. #Quote by Antonio Lobo Antunes

#133. Because one thing she's learned through all this is that if a new beginning is really new; it will feel like a crisis. Any real change should make you feel, at first, afraid; #Quote by Nathan Hill

#134. I guess life is like a novel. Some of it is written by fate, some of it is written by God... but the part we are ultimately judged by is the part we write ourselves. #Quote by Lynn Johnson

#135. All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium. #Quote by John Banville

#136. Plays are literature: the word, the idea. Film is much more like the form in which we dream - in action and images (Television is furniture). I think a great play can only be a play. It fits the stage better than it fits the screen. Some stories insist on being film, can't be contained on stage. In the end, all writing serves to answer the same question: Why are we alive? And the form the question takes - play, film, novel - is dictated, I suppose, by whether its story is driven by character or place. #Quote by Israel Horovitz

#137. Life is like a novel.
Make yours the bestseller! #Quote by Suci Hidayat

#138. Let's just start over", gurgled the hagget's voice. We cannot give up now. #Quote by Zax Vagen

#139. I love the gray area between right and wrong. #Quote by Dan Brown

#140. Novels are pirated all the time, but it's hard to imagine that you're at work and you open up the attachment that your brother sent you and it's the new Phillip Roth novel. #Quote by Adam Mansbach

#141. I had two projects that fell apart during preproduction. The first one was this movie that Judd Apatow and I had written about two guys following the Rolling Stones. It was going to be half concert film, half pseudo-documentary. It was Mick Jagger's idea.The other one was Simple Plan, based on a novel by Scott Smith. It's a great book - really stark, not a comedy - about a guy who finds $4 million in a plane crash and decides to keep it. #Quote by Ben Stiller

#142. Novel-writing can be a cold-blooded business. One uses whatever happens to be lying around in memory and employs it to suit one's end ... .Then, again, during the months whilst one is writing about the past, a story is colored by what presently is happening to its writer. So, imperceptibly, the tone of voice changes, original intentions slip away. And I found myself looking through another window at a darker landscape inhabited by neither the present nor the past. #Quote by J.L. Carr

#143. The novel belongs to our parents, I thought then, I think now. That's what we grew up believing, that the novel belonged to our parents. We cursed them, and also took refuge in their shadows, relieved. While the adults killed or were killed, we drew pictures in a corner. While the country was falling to pieces, we were learning to talk, to walk, to fold napkins in the shapes of boats, of airplanes. While the novel was happening, we played hide-and-seek, we played at disappearing. #Quote by Alejandro Zambra

#144. Some novels present a story form many points of view. Most movies tell only one person's side of the story. Sometime it's easy to use the strongest point of view, or find the character with the most dramatic experience. It depends on which themes the scriptwriter wants to explore. #Quote by Seth Grahame-Smith

#145. Samuel walked out to Lindsey then, and there she was in his arms, my sweet butterball babe, born ten years after my fourteen years on Earth: Abigail Suzanne. Little Susie to me. Samuel placed Susie on a blanket near the flowers. And my sister, my Lindsey, left me in her memories, where I was meant to be. #Quote by Alice Sebold

#146. History is a novel that has been lived, a novel is history that could have been. #Quote by Edmond De Goncourt

#147. In an improv group and a successful work team, the members play off one another, each person's contributions providing the spark for the next. Together, the improvisational team creates a novel emergent product, one that's more responsive to the changing environment. #Quote by R. Keith Sawyer

#148. The two weary but still talkative wizards sat in a pair of fan-backed chairs and pitched pebbles at the drunken satyr in the fountain. They talked about wars, enchantments, and obscure facts until the sky above the forest began to be fringed with pale blue. #Quote by John Bellairs

#149. Sex with him was mind-blowing. It
was a cross between a triple X movie and a Mills and Boon novel. #Quote by Greg Hogben

#150. I swear from the bottom of my heart I want to be healed. I want to be like other men, not this outcast whom nobody wants. #Quote by E. M. Forster

#151. She was always like this, only moves when her mind and heart tells her to move, not doing what everyone demanded her to do. #Quote by Basma Salem

#152. Then she loved him as she would a manifestation of herself, both silenced and wounded in existence, both everything and nothing to eternity. #Quote by E.J. Koh

#153. Let's give our slave a big dream. A big future. #Quote by Stasia Ward Kehoe

#154. I think not in two or three dimensional terms but in five dimensional terms when I consider a novel. There's height, width, and depth, there's the time factor, and then there's the factor which I call the cerebral factor of the reader, the way the reader adjusts to all the other dimensions, which is the fifth dimension. #Quote by Richard Grossman

#155. Brockhurst, the champion of individualism, was soon launched on his favorite topic.

"The great fault of the American nation, which is the fault of republics, is the reduction of everything to the average. Our universities are simply the expression of the forces that are operating outside. We are business colleges purely and simply, because we as a nation have only one ideal - the business ideal."

"That's a big statement," said Regan.

"It's true. Twenty years ago we had the ideal of the lawyer, of the doctor, of the statesman, of the gentleman, of the man of letters, of the soldier. Now the lawyer is simply a supernumerary enlisting under any banner for pay; the doctor is overshadowed by the specialist with his business development of the possibilities of the rich; we have politicians, and politics are deemed impossible for a gentleman; the gentleman cultured, simple, hospitable, and kind, is of the dying generation; the soldier is simply on parade."

"Wow!" said Ricketts, jingling his chips. "They're off."

"Everything has conformed to business, everything has been made to pay. Art is now a respectable career - to whom? To the business man. Why? Because a profession that is paid $3,000 to $5,000 a portrait is no longer an art, but a blamed good business. The man who cooks up his novel according to the weakness of his public sells a hundred thousand copies. Dime novel? No; published by our most conservative publishers - one #Quote by Owen Johnson

#156. A novel, of course, is a fully self-contained work of art. You pick it up off the shelf, open it, and there it is - a whole universe waiting for you to enter. A screenplay is just a blueprint for making a movie. Until the movie is actually filmed, the script really means nothing. #Quote by John Niven

#157. Nobody can be so beautiful from the outside and so hollow from inside. Not even in a third-rate novel. #Quote by Marlene Van Niekerk

#158. Blondes make nice pets. #Quote by Andrew Barger

#159. Novel-writing is the only place where someone who would have liked to do anything can still do that vicariously. #Quote by Richard Powers

#160. My son, Wolf, was born when I was past 40 and the author of a best-selling novel. That means he has grown up a middle-class child - one who sometimes asks me for stories of my childhood but knows nothing of what it means to grow up poor and afraid. I have worked to make sure of that. #Quote by Dorothy Allison

#161. I'm an idiot for trying to avoid these feelings because they have caused me pain in the past. #Quote by Kellyn Roth

#162. We don't really know how technology will affect narrative. That's the question. See, people used to say that the novel is going to die, but they would never say that movies will die with it, when in fact all forms depend on the narrative. I think if one of them fails, the others are going to fail as well. Maybe this will happen to both forms, and maybe movies will take a totally different direction with fiction. #Quote by Don DeLillo

#163. Usually, I start thinking about my next novel soon after completing the latest, and it can take anywhere from a month to 6 months to come up with a story. #Quote by Nicholas Sparks

#164. In the '40s and '50s, a lot of teachers and librarians saw the graphic novel as the enemy of reading. #Quote by Gene Luen Yang

#165. A good novel, one which entices the author as much as it beckons the reader. #Quote by W.J. Raymond

#166. One thing should be put firmly. Where people have commented on that novel [The Paper Men], they generally criticize the poor academic, Rick L. Tucker, who is savaged by the author, Wilfred Barclay. I don't think people have noticed that I have been far ruder about Barclay than I have been about Tucker. Tucker is a fool, but Barclay is a swine. The author really gets his come-uppance. #Quote by William Golding

#167. The image of evolution as a process that reliably produces benign effects is difficult to reconcile with the enormous suffering that we see in both the human and the natural world. Those who cherish evolution's achievements may do so more from an aesthetic than an ethical perspective. Yet the pertinent question is not what kind of future it would be fascinating to read about in a science fiction novel or to see depicted in a nature documentary, but what kind of future it would be good to live in: two very different matters. #Quote by Nick Bostrom

#168. Throughout my career I've lived in constant fear that I wouldn't be good enough, that I'd have nothing to say, that I'd be laughed at, humiliated - and I'm old enough to know that fear will follow me to the very last word I'll ever write. As for now, I feel the first itch of the novel I'm supposed to write - the grain of sand that irritates the soft tissues of the oyster. The beginning of the world as I don't quite know it. But I trust I'll begin to know it soon. #Quote by Pat Conroy

#169. I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated. #Quote by Alan Furst

#170. I tried to write a coming of age novel, but I wasn't deep enough to get past the third chapter. #Quote by Rick Robinson

#171. A tightrope walker uncertain if he could make it to the other side probably would not. A race car driver wondering if he was taking a turn too fast was likely to lose control. If a man feared death, whether his own or the taking of another's, death would surely come calling. #Quote by Roy L. Pickering Jr.

#172. Mystery readers were everywhere, voracious, highly partisan, and passionate. They were among the store's best customers, and unfailingly polite. In private they embraced a bloodthirsty desire for vengeance and the use of arcane poisons and sneaky sleuthing, but in public they were charming and generous. Romance readers tended to be fun and have strong opinions. Nonfiction readers asked a lot of questions and were easily amused. It was the serious novel folks and poetry fans you had to watch out for. #Quote by Abbi Waxman

#173. My first three novels were all the subjects of intensely exciting flurries of calls from producers and even stars' production companies, and once someone actually hired a screenwriter to adapt one of my books - but it all came to nothing, so I tried not to get too excited when a Hollywood suitor came calling for 'Admission,' my fourth novel. #Quote by Jean Hanff Korelitz

#174. I think that the power of art is the power to wake us up, strike us to our depths, change us. What are we searching for when we read a novel, see a film, listen to a piece of music? We are searching, through a work of art, for something that alters us, that we weren't aware of before. We want to transform ourselves, just as Ovid's masterwork transformed me. #Quote by Jhumpa Lahiri

#175. This feeling that
contrary to the consciously philosophic and historical conception which proclaims unceasing and peaceful progress
one is experiencing a last brief, irretrievable intellectual prime of humanity manifests itself in the greatest representatives of this period in different ways, in keeping with the unconscious character of this feeling. #Quote by Gyorgy Lukacs

#176. Expertise and judgment in the art of lending for novel ventures must be reacquired. #Quote by Edmund Phelps

#177. A screenplay adaptation of my 'Punktown' novel 'Health Agent' has been making the rounds. The screenplay was written by my friend, singer/songwriter Walter Egan of 'Magnet & Steel' fame! #Quote by Jeffrey Thomas

#178. Art, a book, a painting, a song, can definitely inspire change, whether it's a small change or a big change but you know there's novels I've read or a scene in a film that I've seen where I definitely inspired something and made a change or addressed an issue in my life or done something cliche like make a phone call. #Quote by Rose Byrne

#179. I'm a fictional monogamist - I can only work on one thing at a time - but each novel starts growing in my head when I'm about midway through the previous novel. #Quote by Julia Glass

#180. Writing novels takes up about 100% of my available working time. #Quote by Charles Stross

#181. Thanks to the comic book publishers. Batman and Captain Marvel were responsible for my learning to read at least a year before I showed up at school. They got me interested in writing. Started my first novel at about eight. The title: 'The Canals of Mars.' #Quote by Jack McDevitt

#182. First, relax. ... And my second helpful hint is that you should not try to memorize anything you read in this book. ... My two words of advice are exemplified in what I call the Russian Novel Phenomenon. Every reader must have experienced that depressing moment about fifty pages into a Russian novel when we realize that we have lost track of all the characters, the variety of names by which they are known, their family relationships and relative ranks in the civil service. At this point we can give in to our anxiety, and start again to read more carefully, trying to memorize all the details on the offchance that some may prove to be important. If such a course is followed, the second reading is almost certain to be more incomprehensible than the first. The probable result: one Russian novel lost forever. But there is another alternative: to read faster, to push ahead, to make sense of what we can and to enjoy whatever we make sense of. And suddenly the book becomes readable, the story makes sense, and we find that we can remember all the important characters and events simply because we know what is important. Any re-reading we then have to do is bound to make sense, because at least we comprehend what is going on and what we are looking for. #Quote by Frank Smith

#183. It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo. #Quote by P.G. Wodehouse

#184. Rachel Hauck is an award-winning, USA Today bestselling author. She is a RITA and Christy Award finalist. The Wedding Dress was named Inspirational Novel of the Year by Romantic Times. Rachel lives in central Florida with her husband and two pets and writes from her ivory #Quote by Rachel Hauck

#185. To be able to analyze plays and novels is so relevant to acting. #Quote by Holliday Grainger

#186. Among those who could read, books were prized possessions. Words on paper were powerful magic, seductive as music, sharp as a knife at times, or gentle as a kiss. Friendships and love affairs blossomed as men and women read to each other in summer meadows and winter kitchens. Pages were ambrosia in their hands. A new novel or collection of poems was something everybody talked about. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shakespeare, Bronte, Austen, Dickens, Keats, Emerson, Cooper, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Twain. To read these authors was to go on a grand adventure and see things as you never had before, see yourself as you never had before. #Quote by Kim Heacox

#187. I do always know where I'm going in my books. I know the endpoint. I've written only two thousand words of my next novel but I know what the ending will be already. #Quote by Jonathan Trigell

#188. I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels. #Quote by William Safire

#189. The seed for my novel 'Half Brother' was planted in my mind over twenty years ago, but didn't germinate until late 2007 when I came across the obituary for Washoe, an extraordinary chimpanzee who had learned over 250 words of American Sign Language. #Quote by Kenneth Oppel

#190. It [fiction] allows us to see the world from the point of view of someone else and there has been quite a lot of neurological research that shows reading novels is actually good for you. It embeds you in society and makes you think about other people. People are certainly better at all sorts of things if they can hold a novel in their heads. It is quite a skill, but if you can't do it then you're missing out on something in life. I think you can tell, when you meet someone, whether they read novels or not. There is some little hollowness if they don't. #Quote by Philip Hensher

#191. When you are writing a novel, you as the author will wear many hats. You are the writer, reader, and most importantly you are the character. If you can do those things your book will become reality to readers. #Quote by LaQuita Cameron

#192. Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential. #Quote by Jorge Luis Borges

#193. Low and behold what comes of reading too many romance novels. #Quote by Kellyn Roth

#194. If it takes you seven years to write each novel, you need a patron. And I would rather have my corporate self as my patron than any arts council or bestower of grants. #Quote by Mohsin Hamid

#195. Before my book, 'California,' came out, I had modest hopes for it. Or, let's put it this way - I had the same hopes that every literary fiction writer in America has: I wanted the novel to be well-received, critically. As for sales? I didn't want it to disappoint, but I didn't expect it to be a best-seller, either. #Quote by Edan Lepucki

#196. The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read. #Quote by Anthony Burgess

#197. Perhaps I am too tame, too domestic a magician. But how does one work up a little madness? I meet with mad people every day in the street, but I never thought before to wonder how they got mad. Perhaps I should go wandering on lonely moors and barren shores. That is always a popular place for lunatics - in novels and plays at any rate. Perhaps wild England will make me mad. #Quote by Susanna Clarke

#198. I know this because Tyler knows this. #Quote by Chuck Palahniuk

#199. This is what I love about novels, both reading them and writing them. They jump into the abyss, to be with you #Quote by John Green

#200. Nowadays people talk about the things he did as though they made sense. As though even his most disastrous mistakes were only the result of bad luck or hubris. #Quote by Jeanette Winterson